Free Republic

Within 24 hours of the Orthodox Church celebrating Easter, three of its buildings around the world have gone up in flames. Orthodox churches in Sydney, Melbourne and New York all caught fire, although there appears to be no link between the blazes. In Sydney, the Macedonian Orthodox Church of the Resurrection was gutted following a fire that broke out about 10pm on Sunday. Less than 12 hours after the end of the Easter service, the Rockdale church, parts of which have been standing since the 1890s, was destroyed. ...

WHEN RUMORS SURFACED early last month that Australian cryptographer Craig Wright would attempt to prove that he created Bitcoin, Gavin Andresen remained skeptical. As the chief scientist of the Bitcoin Foundation, his opinion counts: Andresen is among the earliest programmers for the cryptocurrency, and likely the one who has corresponded more than anyone with Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s pseudonymous, long-lost inventor. Today, Andresen fully believes that Wright is Nakamoto. Now he’ll have to convince the rest of the world, because he’s among the only people to have seen what he claims is the best evidence in Wright’s favor. In an interview...

Treasurer Scott Morrison has made a “preliminary decision” to block the proposed $371m sale of Australia’s largest single landholding, the S. Kidman & Co cattle empire, to a Chinese-led consortium citing national interest concerns. This is the second time Mr Morrison has blocked the sale of Kidman, rejecting a Chinese-led offer in November amid concerns about the sheer scale of the landholding — 10 cattle stations encompassing 101,000sqkm — and the proximity of Kidman’s Anna Creek station to the Woomera weapons testing range in South Australia. The investors have been given a “natural justice period” of until next Tuesday to...

Former prime minister Tony Abbott doesn't expect the Liberal Party to ever reverse its decision to vote him out of the top job. However, he believes what he achieved during his two-year prime ministership will stand the test of time. "I accept that the party made a decision," he told Sky News. "I don't expect the party to ever go back on that decision." The former prime minister says he stuck by his chief of staff and dumped treasurer despite warnings from colleagues because he doesn't "throw people overboard" to save himself. Mr Abbott refused to sack Peta Credlin or...

AS Australia marks 20 years since the Port Arthur massacre, guns still pose a massive threat to our nation. There are more firearms in the country than ever before, more are imported, and owners are amassing larger arsenals in their homes. Gun policy expert Philip Alpers, Adjunct Associate Professor at Sydney School of Public Health, warned this morning that boasts Australia has “solved the gun problem” are premature. When John Howard introduced the National Firearms Act in 1996 after Martin Bryant’s devastating mass shooting, he swore we wouldn’t “go the American way”, and many believe he has been vindicated. “People...

By the end of last year the French were convinced they had made a breakthrough in the race to win Australia’s $50 billion submarine contract. Over a series of meetings in Paris, L’Orient, Cherbourg and Adelaide, engineers from the French naval shipbuilder DCNS shared with Australian naval officers secret data on their submarine’s acoustic signature. The French Barracuda submarine, with its pump jet propulsion system, matches other conventional submarines’ noise emissions at very low cruising speeds under 5 knots. But the data showed that when the Barracuda accelerated, as any submarine must do when pursuing an enemy or evading an...

Australia could become the first foreign nation to buy the radar-guided Raytheon AIM-120D air-to-air missile under a $1.1 billion foreign military sales package approved by the US government this week. AIM-120D is the latest variant of Raytheon’s popular AMRAAM series, developed for the US Air Force and Navy. The networked, beyond-visual-range missile introduces satellite-aided navigation, a two-way datalink and new guidance software that “improves kinematic performance and weapon effectiveness”. It has greater range than the legacy variants and is optimised for high-angle off-boresight shots. Canberra has requested 450 missiles – as well as instrumented test vehicles and spare guidance sections...

Australia has awarded the A$50 billion ($40 billion) contract to build the country's new fleet of submarines to French naval contractor DCNS, sources said on Tuesday, dealing a major blow to Japan's nascent defence export industry. Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will officially announce on Tuesday the winner of the contract to build the country's 12 new submarines, but two sources familiar with the process told Reuters that France has secured the contract ahead of Japanese and German bidders. Another source at the French naval contractor said he was "quietly confident" of success ahead of the announcement by Turnbull. Australia...

A 16-year-old boy will appear in a Sydney court later today charged with planning a terrorist attack at a Sydney Anzac Day event. Counter terrorism police arrested the teenager in his home in Auburn, in Sydney’s west, yesterday afternoon. NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said the age of the suspect was concerning. “Now, the age of the individual is of significant concern. Sixteen years of age. A boy,” NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione told reporters this morning. Mr Scipione said the boy had been charged with one count of acts in preparation or planning a terrorist act. The offence carries...

...To inspect the full sweep of properties on the block by air would take about a week.

Imagine the grief this man endured in Kindergarten with such a last name.

According to two research scientists the mystery of vanished ships and airplanes in the region dubbed "The Bermuda Triangle" has been solved. Step aside outer space aliens, time anomalies, submerged giant Atlantean pyramids and bizarre meteorological phenomena ... the "Triangle" simply suffers from an acute case of gas. Natural gas—the kind that heats ovens and boils water—specifically methane, is the culprit behind the mysterious disappearances and loss of water and air craft. The evidence for this astounding new insight into a mystery that's bedeviled the world is laid out in a research paper published in the American Journal of Physics....

Australian soldiers killed in the Vietnam War and buried in Malaysia and Singapore will be brought home in June with a full military ceremony, it was announced Sunday. Thirty-five soldiers who died in the conflict lie in Malaysia's Terendak Cemetery, which sits inside a large, operational military base, and one other in Kranji War Cemetery in Singapore. In May last year, then prime minister Tony Abbott offered repatriation to the families and more than 30 of them have accepted the offer. "The homecoming of their family member will be a very moving and emotional time, and their right to privacy,...

AMBER Heard and her Hollywood superstar husband Johnny Depp have jetted in to the Gold Coast ahead of their date with destiny with a Southport judge. The most glamorous court case to hit the Gold Coast in years is set to get under way today as Heard stands trial for allegedly smuggling the couple’s dogs in to the country a year ago, while Depp was shooting Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales on the Gold Coast. ..... Heard was charged with of two counts of illegal importation and one count of producing a false document, her incoming...

The call for action from scientists in the UK, US, Europe and Australia reflects a growing consensus among experts that frequent cannabis use can increase the risk of psychosis...In the UK, cannabis is the most popular illegal drug, and according to Public Health England data, more young people enter treatment centres for help with cannabis than any other drug, alcohol included.

Students as young as 12 will study sexualised personal ads and write their own advertisements seeking the "perfect partner" as part of a new school curriculum supposed to combat family violence. The classroom material includes an example ad from a "lustful, sexually generous" person seeking "sexy freak out with similarly intentioned woman". Another ad — to be analysed by Year 8 students aged 12 and 13 — is from a "30-year-old blonde bombshell, wild and sexy, living in the fast lane". "Can you keep up?" it asks. Children are instructed to “write your own personal ad for the perfect partner’’....

A former soldier, who served in East Timor, is fighting for his life after a brutal attack by an ISIS supporter who was locked in the same prison cell of a New South Wales jail. The pair were placed together at Kempsey prison’s maximum security section, on the state’s Mid North Coast on Thursday morning, just a few hours before the unprovoked attack. It is believed the 18-year-old attacker choked the 40-year-old and carved ‘e4e’ into the front and back of the victim's head with a sharp object during the attack, to signify the group’s ‘eye for an eye’ torture...

(CNSNews.com) - Speaking at the University of Chicago Law School yesterday, President Barack Obama criticized what he described as the difficulty of voting in the United States of America. “We really are the only advanced democracy on Earth that systematically and purposely makes it really hard for people to vote,” he said. “Maybe the single biggest change that we could make in our political process that would reduce some of the polarization, make people feel more invested, restore integrity to the system, would be just make sure everybody is voting,” said Obama. “Australia has got mandatory voting. You start getting...

It’s every family’s worst nightmare, and it’s the reason to have self-defense tools and preparations in your home. But many governments around the world don’t hold the same basic protections for home defense that the United States does in most states (and clearly, there are forces at work to undermine that as well). This father was charged with murder in Australia for fighting and killing a rapist who was entering their home in attempted robbery… and found close to his daughter’s room. Ask yourself, would you do any differently? Via the International Business Times: “A young dad in Australia has...

It’s been said so often but never actually examined in great detail – the Future Submarine Program is strategic for Japan and Australia. In speaking to the submarine community, past and present, what comes through is that cooperation with Japan results in a Future Submarine that can approach the performances of Collins but only with a completely new design and one that will definitely not be regionally superior post 2030. This is alarming and requires pause for thought. The root-cause of this problem is that Japan does not have any technology that is, well, regionally superior. Indeed it is the...